Vandenberg by Oliver Lange (review)

268 Western American Literature are in fact these quotations and its wealth of illustrations reproduced from contemporary engravings. One wonders whether Mr. Dodge is really more interested in the ethnological than the geographical aspects of his subject. Perhaps at this point some statement is in order regarding the act of scholarly imperialism implied in annexing Mr. Dodge’s subject, the entire Pacific Ocean, to the dominions of Western American Literature. It is true that nineteenth-century Americans regarded the exploration and colonization of the Pacific as an extension of the movement on land from East to West. It is also true that the Pacific was an integral component of the literary visions created by some of our great writers—Melville, Twain, Whitman, and Adams, for example. Thus, while few would dispute that America must stop some­ where, “the Pacific frontier” carries strong historical credentials for legitimate study as a setting wherein certain phases of American culture made their appearance. Mr. Dodge, whose approach is international, is of course not concerned with this issue. Interestingly, however, even though he lists none of the above American writers in his thorough index, he professes to be keenly interested in the “literature” of the Pacific— and as Director of the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, he undoubtedly is. “It has been my joy,” he writes in his introduction, “as well as my professional obligation over the years, to read the published voyages [italics mine] relating to the Pacific Ocean.” The obvious disparity between his notion of the “literature” of the Pacific and the orthodox critical one that would include Melville et al. raises a basic question about the present scope of literary study. If we agree that narratives of land travel constitute a dominant literary form in Western American literature of the nineteenth century, should we not go one step further and examine American narratives of Pacific sea travel also? Not in­ frequently the descriptive talents of the authors quoted by Mr. Dodge are impressive enough to warrant the surmise that their works merit study not only as “sources” (Wilkes’ Narrative as a source of Cooper’s The Sea Lions, for example) but as literary achievements in themselves. The reader of Beyond the Capes, sensitive to Mr. Dodge’s affection for early sea narratives and frus­ trated by his failure to do them justice, may be inclined to find out whether this is so. W a y n e R . K im e, New College, University of Toronto Vandenberg. By Oliver Lange. (New York: Stein and Day, 1971. 333 pages S6.95.) This is a "political” novel, this is an adventure novel (set in the not distant future) —and sometimes they come together, although most of the time they do not and what one has is a pretty good “western,” (with the “Indians” as the good guys) which gets interrupted by an essay. It’s certainly not Malraux , etc., etc. It’s not Walter Van Tilburg Clark. In short, it’s not a work of art; no one will ever re-read it, coming back, in delight, to discover how it is structured, how its words are articulated, how the political ideas are Reviews 269 realized in the work; if it is to be talked about, it is, first, as an act of politics (ratiier confused), and, second, as a more dian competent story for the middlelevel intellectual (most of us). Politically, it’s a grade A bitch about, against, almost everything in modern America (and modern Russia), given from the point of view of someone whose intellectual relatives are a mixed and somewhat contradictory bag of minor Nietzscheans, cross-grained Thoreauvians, etc.; e.g., technology is bad but some of its products, such as a fine rifle, are admirable; man, es­ pecially modern American man, is soft and weak and mindlessly cruel; nature, red in tooth and claw, is better; there is such a thing as original sin (not theological, but biological), although human institutions do not restrain evil (in fact, they promote evil, being prisons— no Grand Inquisitor here); most people are interior and, though they should not be hurt, the superior person owes nothing to them, owes nothing to anybody. In...